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The Supreme Court justices, hearing arguments in a Los Angeles case, sounded prepared Tuesday to revive a city ordinance that gives the police the authority to regularly check motels' guest registries without search warrants. City officials say these routine police checks are needed to combat sex trafficking, prostitution and drug dealing at low-budget motels. Last year, an appeals court struck down the city's ordinance as a violation of the 4th Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches. Scores of cities and the Justice Department joined in support of the city's appeal and argued that publicly held business records are not protected as if they were private...

The future of California’s effort to entrust a nonpartisan citizens’ panel with redrawing the state’s congressional districts appeared in serious doubt Monday after arguments in the Supreme Court.
The court’s conservative justices voiced agreement with a...

The Supreme Court on Tuesday cut back on the power of state licensing boards to restrict competitors from offering low-cost services, a victory for consumers that could prove significant in industries as disparate as taxicabs, funerals and cosmetology.
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The Supreme Court on Monday gave its strongest signal yet that the legal fight for nationwide gay marriage has been won even before the issue is argued in April.
The justices, with only two dissenting votes, turned down Alabama’s plea to delay same-sex...

In his 2014 end-of-the-year report on the federal judiciary, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that courts “have proceeded cautiously when it comes to adopting new technologies in certain aspects of their own operations.” Very true, but in one...

There's no question that the new proposal on network neutrality from Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is a breakthrough of immense proportions.
Wheeler, in an essay published Wednesday on Wired magazine's website, said he...

Seeing an opening to weaken public-sector unions, a conservative group is asking the Supreme Court to strike down laws in California, Illinois and about 20 other states that require teachers and other government employees to pay union fees, even if they...

In an ideal America, it might be appropriate for the law to concern itself only with racial discrimination that is overt, conscious and deliberate. In the real America of entrenched racial inequality, Congress and the courts rightly have recognized that...

The Supreme Court signaled Wednesday it may be about to chip away at another 1960s-era civil rights law.
At issue is the Fair Housing Act of 1968, passed a week after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. The law makes it illegal to refuse to...

In a clash between the 1st Amendment and judicial ethics code, the Supreme Court debated Tuesday whether to free elected judges to personally ask for campaign contributions from voters, including lawyers and others who might one day find themselves in...

When Justice Anthony M. Kennedy spoke for the Supreme Court in 2013 in striking down part of a federal law that denied benefits to legally married gay couples, he cited two reasons: states' rights and equal rights.
Throughout American history, Kennedy...

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will be asked to overturn a modest rule designed to minimize the reality and appearance of corruption in judicial elections, which increasingly are attracting the sort of special-interest money that gravitates to elections...

Setting the stage for its most significant ruling on gay rights, the U.S. Supreme Court said Friday that it would resolve the two-decade legal battle over same-sex marriage.
The justices agreed to hear cases from Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee,...

The Supreme Court warned would-be bank robbers Tuesday that taking a hostage will send them to prison for an extra 10 years or more, even if they merely move a few feet across a room.
In a 9-0 decision, the justices upheld a 1934 law passed in response...

The Supreme Court justices met Friday to make a historic decision on whether to hear a case that could decide if the Constitution's protection of liberty and equality means same-sex couples have a right to marry nationwide.
But first, they must...

Since the 1970s, employers have been warned not to discriminate against pregnant employees, who "shall be treated the same" as other workers, according to a 1978 law.
But as a Supreme Court argument revealed Wednesday, it is still not exactly...

Decades after Congress passed an anti-discrimination law ensuring that pregnant employees "shall be treated the same" as other workers, the Supreme Court struggled Wednesday with exactly what that federal rule requires.
Some say it means...

Should a fisherman face two decades in prison for discarding a few fish at sea? That question is at the core of a statutory interpretation case the Supreme Court heard in November, but it also raises another question: What does "cruel and unusual...